Guild Wars 2

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYVl0Mp0pFOx5J0PRRLBtV05aIe/m2kGNvQAA-TZBFwAG3fo9ZAYxhAAaZAAPAAA

Join the celestial spam fest before it gets nerfd.
“bunker” a point and enjoy spaming bleeds, cripple, weakness, and poison while covering it with needles.
Never go stealth unless you want to clear 1 condition or get a backstab, and even then never ever stay in stealth for more than 1/2 sec.

disclaimer: build might be kitten.

this is my best gunslinger build for wvw

It has good stat distribution and has a almost constant 30% dmg bonus.
d/p set is for finishing off your targets when they get to ~50% hp and for moving around the map/escaping with heartseeker.

It nowhere near as strong as other thief setups due to how disjointed p/p is, but when you get used to playing it (spaming 3 70% of the time, mimicking longbow ranger playstyle where you keep your distance, and spaming your heal all the time for movement speed, and doing all that without any stealth) it works.

So if you have gold to spend i would say try it.

Well your math seems wrong. The 3 small bombs deal less damage individually, but if all 3 hit they actually do deal a bit more (e.g. with 2002 power the cluster bomb deals 1.064 dmg, the small bombs deal 1.101 [367 per small bomb*3, but the tool tip shows only the damage from 1 small bomb]).

Also take in to consideration the fact that cluster bomb puts 1 stack of bleeding but the detonation can put on 3 stacks (1 from each small bomb).
Another advantage to detonating the cluster is that if your critical chance is not very high, detonating can deal more reliable damage since each small bomb has a chance to crit, where the big one ether crits or doesn’t.
The only down side is the detonation costs 1 initiative and is not a blast finisher (important if you want to use cb to get aoe weakness with choking gas).

The way to get all 3 small bombs to hit 1 target is to detonate the cluster when it is near the ground so that they do not spread like crazy (when it is just about to land, or when it is on the same height as the enemy’s head).

To jump dodge pres your dodge key right after you pres your jump key (the timing is very precise you basically pres them at the same time but pres the jump first if that makes any sense).
Dodge jumping makes your jump go slightly farther, as if you have swiftness while jumping (so if you have swiftness a normal jump will take you the same distance as a dodge jump without swiftness).

I am all for thief skills that debilitate/hinder opponents. Also sword shouldn’t have the same dual skill as dagger, all skills should be unique.
That said here are some assassin skills from gw1 that could be remade (with similar functionality) for the thief.

Entangling Asp

Iron Palm
it could be changed to say: remove the blind condition from your target and deal x dmg and cause a 1 sec knock down (no effect unless blind was removed) or something to prevent mindless spam, same thing for the previous skill.

Mark of Insecurity
could be changed so that it end early if the target moves a certain distance from you (say like 400 units or so, something low ranged so that it is easy to remove cos it is spamable) and it could put on a negative regeneration effect that scales with condi dmg, and for the second part of the skill it would make boons expire faster (since that is the equivalent to enchantments)

Siphon Strength
same as Mark of Insecurity- ends early if target moves a certain distance from you, also a high ini cost (like 7 or 9)

Beguiling Haze
again high ini cost and a failure state (like no daze unless your target has no boons or something to make it more timing/combo based rather than just brain dead spam)

There are allot more skills from gw1 that could be remade (but still be made to feel similar) should anet ever make new weapon/utility skills.

Everyone knows venoms are fairly underpowered and require lots of trait investment to make them, well still weak. So i am throwing some ideas to change them.

Venoms have been buffed in the past but in the wrong way me thinks. You see arenanet refuses to make venom skills good on their own, because then if you actually traited for them they would become op. Since me also thinks that all skills (utility or otherwise) should not need any traits to be useful, venoms should get a bit of a overhaul.

Instead of just giving you a few charges that then make your attacks apply a few seconds of conditions on a target (i mean look at ice drake venom, can’t get much more pathetic than that) they should also apply a debuff with a secondary effect with each strike (similar how the warrior offhand sword skill, impale does; a negative effect that is not a condition and cannot be cleansed).
This way venoms could be made more versatile and useful without traits and outside of condition builds, but this would mean traits would also need to be adjusted.

So the new ice drake venom would be: Chill foes with the next three attacks and also apply a iced veins effect with each strike that makes your foes actions 15% slower

Ice Drake Venom (30 s): Next three attacks inflict chill and iced veins
Chilled: 2 s (1 s base is to low)
iced veins 2.25s (with each strike)
Number of Attacks: 3

Every venom could have it’s own debuff like this making them more useful in pretty much every build. (basilisk venom could put on a debuff that makes all incoming vulnerability last 25% longer, skelk venom could put on a debuff that transfers a % of healing from the affected targets to the thief, ect get creative).

Now if venoms were to get buffs like thees there is 1 trait that would have to be changed: venomous aura
Instead of copying the whole venom with all of it’s charges and other trait effects (which would be op with the new venoms) it would only give surrounding allies 1 charge (that would still work with other venom traits).

Some other trait changes that come to mind and could make venoms more appealing would be:
Residual Venom: condition applied by venoms last 25% longer
(this would include the new venom debuff effects)

Leeching Venoms: Siphon life from your foe when triggering a venom. Attacks that deliver the venoms are unblockable.
(use a basilisk venom and get a unblockable back stab)

Quick Venoms: Reduces recharge on venom skills. gain 1 initiative when you use up all charges of a venom.

I know there are a ton of other posts about buffing thees skills but i felt like throwing out my ideas, so sorry if i bored you.
Also feel free to pitch in whatever you think might also be a worthy change.

If you’r bored of the boring meta make your own build, that is half the fun of it. Open gw2 build editor and have at it, it is much funer (i know this is not a real word idc) that just ctrl c ctrl v someone else’s build.

But if you are the crtl cv type i won’t judge so here you go you lazy sneak

da build

It plays like no other teef setup, relying on positioning and shadowsteps rather than stealth spaming or evade spaming (you can still evade spam pistol whip has a 1.1/4 sec evade time while you are swinging your sword but the tooltip ignores that fact, 3 years after the game released srsly how long does it take to fix a godkitten tooltip).

You have some of the strongest sustained damage out there, and with decent hp and armor backed up by blinds and weakness spam (crippling strike) you can trade blows without much worry (this is something few thief setups can do cos they are too squshy).
The slight lack of power is made up by high crit chance and high furry uptime, but to be most effective you need the guard leech wvw buff and a superior sharpening stone

Don’t spam 3 all the time, time it to actually interrupt things and manage your initiative so that you have more than 6 (a full pistol whip can do more damage than a back stab but it takes allot more preparation to make the whole thing connect).

This build is made with solo taking supply camps fast in mind (pull all the mobs to a corner or behind a wall) and taking out other roamers or as a part of a havok team.
Use your blinding powder to ether get a quick blind off, get access the tactical strike daze or run away (keep in mind you can use it to blast the black powder for 1 sec longer stealth).

The sigils on the short bow are a personal preference since i like to fight engineers, got to clear those condys like a bawler.
Dagger storm is also a personal preference since i encounter allot of bad power rangers who don’t know how to cancel their rapid fire, and i can’t be bothered with them so i let them commite scuicide – basi venom is a better option in most other scenarios.

This trait is suppose to give thieves a option to get some sustain in a otherwise offensive trait line, and in pve it somewhat does work since you can easily cleave more than 1 target.
But in wvw and especially in pvp it is fails to deliver, so i think it could do with some adjustments. I mean there is nothing wrong with traits that are focus on only one game mode/nich but what bugs me is that this is a grand master trait and it shares the same spot as 2 other extremely powerful traits.

So in it’s current iteration it requires high power and ferocity – they determine how much you are healed for, and high precision – the trigger for the trait
The issue is that for it to have any effect you have to go full glass, but that is a bad idea in pvp and especially in wvw, making it so that 2-3 hits will kill you.
The thing is for it to be effective you need to be able to work some toughness and/or vitality in to your build, which does’t really work with the current version of the trait (since you need a very high amount of power, precision&ferocity to get anything out of it).

I believe they way to buff it is to make it give a passive bonus to precision in addition to it’s current effect. Some thing between 85 and 150 precision (4% and 7% crit chance)
This way you could forgo some precision and replace it with vit or toughness while retaining a high enough crit chance.
This would make it so that you could actually take some damage without dying instantly, and still have a high crit chance.

If you have any other suggestions feel free to post them

this one or this other one

Both setups are very similar in damage and survivability, but the second build has a more active condition clear and requires basilisk venom.

It is for wvw, and i know executioner works a million times better that invigorating precision, but i just like that trait.

Do any of you realise that it is already possible to chain 2 backstabs, thanks to it’s 1/4 cast time.

Basically you cast the bs at the very end of stealth so that when it connects you are not actually in stealth, allowing you to cnd for another shot (the trait hidden thief is perfect for this since you can instantly get stealth with steal after the initial bs).

The downside of this is that traits like hidden killer do not work for the 1st backstab since you are delivering it out of stealth.

Try it on the practice golems in the pvp lobby.

Evilek.5690:

Maybe L2P D/D hybrit build https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liTwueajvMU , i use condy/power D/D +- 1.5 years and work all time.

But the thing is you are not playing a real hybrid, you have some power sure but all you are actually doing is spamming db and occasionally using hs to close the gap. Just going full dire gear would get you better results, using p/d would get you better results and in that set you actively use more than 1 skill in combat.

And that is the real issue i made this post over, d/d as a set is not functional as hybrid, it is just mindless 3 spam.
I just want a net to buff d/d as a hybrid/condi set to make it not a kitten version of p/d, or remake the skill to compliment the d/d power setup – like alot of people said just increasing the evade time and reducing the aftercast would do it.

The vid you posted is fun to watch but i am gona quote myself:

prepare to face the mighty Back Stabbing Black Jack The Blade and his condi d/d build, you better be ready for all the 3 spam

The obligatory ‘wahoo!’ at the end of every single post makes me think vee wee is a huge one piece fan.

Also since s/he always refers to him, um her itself in 3rd person makes me believe vee wee is the head master of the iluminati – this could explain the 2 different accounts vee wee goes under.

Also is it not strange how vee wee is always ranked n80, he never seems to gain or loose ranks ever! This leads me to believe that we are all in the matrix and vee wee is the architect (read – the ENGINEER), monitoring us all and holding the n80 rank hostage!!

Not a bug but a odd interaction with projectile reflection/block skills such as wall of reflection, smoke screen, whirling defense ect.

Basically if the shot lands in or goes through the reflect/block skill it gets destroyed instead of reflected (since it is a ground targeted aoe).
To counter this just make sure the projectile itself lands before it makes contact with a reflect/block skill (the middle of the aoe circle indicator needs to be infront of said skill, since this is where the projectile lands).

I am unsure if it works like this with all skills, but i am 100% it interacts this way with ranger’s whirling defense – when warriors use combustive shot directly on top of me and i use wd, the whole skill disappears upon the projectile making contact with the wd animation, but i can still see the red danger circle as if the skill has landed.

Blind him so he misses the stun of the pw, allowing you to move away or take the trait that gives retaliation on death shroud and watch him die in the middle of his 333 spam (retal only works if you are geared for power).
Immobilize also works well, use it after he casts infiltrators strike so he has to port back to remove it – after that he will want to infiltrate again to get to you, dodge it and he is out of initiative – procede to melt face.

You have to take the advantage of s/p disadvantage, which is the inability to be mobile (in comparison to thief weapons) and heavy initiative costs so avoiding infiltrators strike/basi venom is the way to win.

here you go

It is by no means a conventional build but i tested it and it is solid.
Has good stat distribution, but takes some time getting used to as it uses acrobatics and weakness as a defense rather than shadow arts.

you can replace sigil of force with sigil of fire, trading sustaind damage for more burst if you want.

also pop the assassins signet when your target is at about 40%ish health.
Also also -40% (or -36%) condi duration food is preaty mandatory with all the stupid mesmer torment spam going on.

Because it happened before with necromancers.

Once upon a time players complained that necromancers had lackluster condition builds and no real condition pressure and low sustained condi damage compared to other classes. So anet graced necromancers with a few buffs, mainly introducing the trait terror and duhum fire, so now necromancers could melt your face while keeping you in a rather long fear stunlock. But that was not enough! nono that they introduced torment to the game and gave some to necros, at which point mass qq started.

And goody was the qq loud, so much so that in the following moths necromancers got nerf after nerf to the point where fear dmg was cut in half, they got alot of bleeding taken away from some skills, and they got their vulnerability duration culled and dhum fire got butchered.
Now some people are saying that the condition damage necromancers can pull out is actually lower than what they had before the buffs.

So i am afraid that rangers do not go through the same treatment.

Now the main focus of qq is rf, but when people realize how strong greatsword (especially if you take moment of clarity – potential 3 sec stun followed by a beastly maul) and melee ranger in general is, the crying may spread to other weapons.

Then there are the ranger’s signets, which are probably some of the strongest signets across all classes. Reason why sotw is basically balanced stance that also boosts your damage and gives passive regeneration or sos is endure pain and dolyak signet rolled in to one, is because they required a grand master trait to work – and now are another potential qq target.

So what are your thoughts, do you thing that rangers are gonna get the bat in the next 6-12 months?

Now that every other weapon set got shaved by a katana can we?

Make the evade last 1/2 sec like any other evade skill ever and reduce the aftercast.
Then maybe make it apply vulnerability for a few sec (3sec or so nothing big) on each strike to make the thing actually have synergy with the rest of the skills.

Or maybe buff the damage instead, get creative make each strike deal x% more dmg than the previous IF the previous strike hit (say give it 300 base dmg and every strike deals 50% more if the last on hit something).

Or just redesign it, having 1 condition damage skill on a set that is otherwise power based makes 0 sense not to mention that using d/d as a condi setup is subpar and stupid to play
-prepare to face the mighty Back Stabbing Black Jack The Blade and his condi d/d build, you better be ready for all the 3 spam and absolutely nothing else-

Final thrust deals almost the exact same dmg as eviscerate to targets below 50% (1 dmg less check the wiki if you want). It is on a condition damage/hybrid weapon and has a painfully slow animation and standard melee range.
Arcing slice gives fury, has damage that is constant at all adrenaline levels and is a easy way to prock cleansing ire.
I honestly don’t get why so many ppl are disliking the skill, it is almost as if they were expecting great sword to get a aoe eviscerate.

So the thief aa chain used to make a sort of whop noise when you attack, kind of sounded like you are swinging underwater.
The necromancer dagger aa chain has a more swooping noise, it sounds like you are swinging through air.

Now after the pach i noticed that the thief dagger aa has both the necromancer sound and the thief sound, at the same time.
Is this intended? It doesn’t effect gameplay in any way ofcourse it just sounds awkward.

I suggest anet change it so that if you miss flanking strike larcenous strike deals 50% less damage instead of not getting to use it at all, and keep fs 4 initiative and ls 1.

This way the skill is not totally messed up, and you would still need to land fs to get the maximum effect. And if you don’t you can still get a boon and deal a bit of damage.

In one build, no seriously look at it just LOOK AT IT!

I have been running this today and sotw -> hilt bash -> maul is like smacking someone with skull crack and then instagibing them with evis.
You also have good mobility, lots of evades, immobilize spam and good armor/health, so pretty much everything.

-build editor is not updated yet, hilt bash is a 3 sec daze/stun and swoop evades and sotw effects you-

Whirling defense to make longbow haste rapid fire trigger happy ranger quit the game.

Seems like anet wants older players to use tomes of knowledge to speed level alts since leveling is dull when you make your 4th char.
Thees changes are so awkward and unnecessary, i mean was anyone complaining that the game threw to many mechanics at you to quickly or that open world pve was hard? Hell no from what i see they just made it slow and more boring for new players to go through levels 2-40ish.

“Regain initiative faster while in stealth.”
Initiative: 1
Interval: 10 s (tooltip bug actual interval: 3s)

Does anyone use this thing? I really can’t see any use for it other than trolling wvw with permastealth. Why would anyone pick this over infusion of shadows which gives you one more ini and lets you be more aggressive since you don’t need to wait 3 sec to see the benefit of the trait.

I just want a gw2 version of domain of anguish and underworld, infact if all they did was copy the original ones and give them better textures i would still be happy.

A common combo guards do that really screws rangers is judge’s intervention → zealot’s defense, instant port to you followed up by heavy dps whilst blocking ranged damage.
So take a offhand axe and use whirling defense, he will take the damage from wd, stack vulnerability and eat his own zealot defense (reflected projectiles can’t be blocked ).

Also a jungle spider is very good since it has 2 Immobilizes and poison, and never use rapid fire when they have retaliation (or camp longbow when they port in melee range), and stay outside their symbols.
That’s all there is to it really, if all fails you should be able to outrun them.

The minor traits in acro are quite good, fluid strikes is the easiest damage modifier to consistently keep on. The reason the line is considered weak is because other than vigorous recovery and pain response, there are no good traits (maybe fleet shadow in some builds ).

:

Assassin’s Equilibrium
Can you please explain to us what was the thinking process that lead to this trait?

I believe the idea was that after you backstab a scary hammer warrior you can, in the next 2 sec, without fear spam hearstseaker as fast as posible

Sure thing, you can make necro’s life force drain ooc but only if necros get warrior’s great sword and a utility that makes him immune to physical damage.

necromancer != warrior stop asking for unrealistic nerfs to one of the weakest classes just because your favorite facerole spec got the nerf bat to the face.

So i’m doing spvp with my ranger, rushing to defend home from a condi engy, i get there jump on the point to stop the decap and get condi spiked with bombs and such.
No problem, that is the reason i run signet of renewal to counter heavy condi burst, i use it and…..nothing.

I suggest anet change the signet to make the pet pull all conditions from the player who is using it regardless of how far the pet is ( it would still pull all conis from 4 random allies within 600 radius of the pet ).

This would make it far more reliable, so when you are bleeding out the ears and need a full cleanse, you don’t get screwd cos your pet is trying to figure out how stairs work half the map away
Or make the pet ai actually good and responsive so that it runs next to the player and doesn’t get stuck on terrain and lagg a milion feet behind you. Ether one would work

Change point blank shot to interact with the target the same way short bow skill 3, quick shot does – you instantly turn towards your target and shoot him.

The reason for this is that this skill fails and goes on cooldown if you use it and your target is slightly off to the side of you (this is most noticeable against thieves).
This makes it a gamble to use it when the target is within 350ish distance of you (as he may just strafe or use a movement ability and make the skill just fail), which happens to be the distance this skill is most effective.

This change would give longbow some reliable kiting options against classes that can flank alot and close distance easily – how many times have you tried to use point blank shot on a warrior who is “dancing” around you wile chopping you with an axe, and you use pbs to get him off of you but nothing happens because he happens to have gone to the side of you and now you have 15 sec cd on your skill.

I recently made a elementalist and i am not sure if this build would work. I need some pointers cos i really don’t want to sink lots of gold blindly.
The build is aimed for wvw roaming.

P/P needs to get some sort of a buff, seeing how your defensive skill on that weapon set is meant for fighting in melee (black powder) but the rest of your skills are tailored for ranged battle.
On top of that all skills have a absurd initiative cost which doesn’t help the fact your auto attack is rather weak, and most of the skills are a sort of ‘’utility weapon skills’’ as in they are not there to do damage (head shot, body shot, and black powder deal almost no dmg).

But if you have gold to burn you can try this build for wvw, it is weak compared to any other thief build (cos p/p is a disjointed and weak set) but it gets results, especally since ppl don’t expect you to go gunslinger on them.

Is traiting for invigorating speed and armor mods better than taking acidic coating and adrenal implant?

As far as i can tell both option achieve the same effect.
The only difference is that armor mods works against range attacks, and that adrenal implant can’t be tempered with since it is not a boon (stolen, corrupted, ect.).

What is a better power weapon?

Axe auto attack is weak but ghastly claws do a decent burst of damage and are on a short cooldown. Unholy feast deals moderate dmg rips a boon and gives retaliation, also has a short cooldown.

Dagger (main hand) has a good auto attack chain that can quickly build up life force, while also dealing good dmg. But the other 2 dagger skills are so clunky, syphon life deals less dmg than ghastly slaws has 1 and 1/4 sec longer channel time and a longer cd.
Dark pact deals less dmg than unholy feast and has a much longer cd, but has a nice Immobilize.

It almost looks like if axe had the dagger chian it would be a perfect weapon.

Also is life shypon really that strong of a skill that it deserves a 3 and 1/4 sec channel time, i mean you almost never use it for the whole duration.
Wouldn’t it be better if it had the same channel time as ghastly claws but a bit longer cooldown?

So i want to make a power build for wvw and i thought it would be better if i post what i came up here first to get some opinions, since this is not cheap to make.

the build

The idea is to maintain perma fury by hoping in and out of death shroud (or staying in it for range damage via life blast & vulnerability stacking).

Now i know i can get allot more dmg by traiting for spite, but i just can’t get myself to like spite i mean the minor traits in it are a joke (1 stack of might that i get when i am almost dead [and this is a grandmaster minor lol] healing power based on power.. who cares, and a minor heal when i kill something, useless in wvw/pvp).

I mean a actual bleed application on every hit, not like the shortbow which has a requirement to hit from the side or behind.
(this makes it very hard to put bleeding on a target that is actively fighting you in close range which is where you use the sbow, and even so the bleed is way to short)
Why doesn’t axe mainhand have a bleed on hit? I know it is suppose to be a power weapon as evident by it’s trait, but no one ever uses axe as a power weapon.

Imagine if the thief or necromancer did not have the bleed on their pistol / scepter attacks, sure they could do a condi burst every 10 sec or so but after that their damage would drop and they would have no sustained pressure.

This skill confuses me. I know it is used to get permanent regeneration and swiftness with nature’s voice, but on it’s own what purpose does it serve?
What were the devs thinking when they made this skill?

‘’Command your pet to aggressively guard an area. Your pet gains stealth and protection for the duration of the skill.’’

All i can see is a glorified ‘attack my target’ button that takes a skill slot. If it gave your pet x amount of bonus dmg for a few sec upon breaking stealth i could get behind that, but this is just… i realy do not get this.

And it’s not like your pet is capable of defending a point in pvp with this skill if that was what was intended for it.

Also why does it take 1 sec to use this skill? it is a shout, do you need to take a deep breath to yell at your pet to go and stand still? In all seriousness all other shouts ingame are instant cast that can be used while disabled, but this one takes 1 sec to cast… is it uber powerful or am i not seeing something?

Runes of the scholar for pve are always better.

For wvw runes of the pack are quite good in the sense that they give raw power.
The +30% swiftness is really good if you have the adept minor trait in acrobatics, not to mention they give a better uptime of fury than furious retaliation (the 4th rune bonus is comparable to thrill of the crime).

The thing with strenght runes is they are not really worth it unless you have 5 in shadow arts and a quick access to stealth (so off hand dagger is the name of the game).
Just cose they are the ‘be all end all’ dps runes at the moment doesn’t mean you absolutely have to take them, especially if your build does not naturally have might stacking (again 5 in shadow arts).

I am new to warrior and i need opinions on which build is better for wvw

this one has a much higher crit chance

this one has a lot more raw power

Any modifications or suggestions are appreciated

This is a really strange issue i have, where when i try to get on my warrior character my laptop does a hard shutdown as soon as the loading screen is finished.
When i get on any other character ,which i have 4 of ,the game works fine.

I scanned the hdd for bad sectors and errors and nothing came up, i scanned my laptop for viruses (with avast) and nothing came up, and i started the game client with the -repair command line and it did not help.

The only thing left is to reinstall the game, which i will have to try but i figured it is better to make a post first and wait a day to see if someone has any ideas, since this is a really strange thing exclusive to 1 character, and i really don’t feel like downloading the whole game again unless it is the last resort.

Also i did not change any drivers or did bios update or anything, this just started happening 1 day ago out of the blue.

Don’t spam your weapon skills, it makes you predictable and easy to counter as well as draining your initiative leaving you vulnerable and limiting your options.

For wvw the pistol/dagger conditon build is good for learning how to cloak and dagger, dodge, and stick to your target and is a forgiving set, albeit malicious so you can expect lots of trash talking coming your way.

The problem with any other set is that in this twisted meta you die way to easy if you over extend, and there are classes that can instagib you (dodge eviscerate at all costs, run from engineers), so don’t feel bad if you die allot, or if other players /laugh at you after you run away.

I generally try to have over 15k hp and 2.4k armor, but learning how to time your dodges (especially weapon dodges, again do not spam stuff like flanking/larcious strike and pistol whip just to get more dmg but rather use them to actually evade/interrupt something) will save you more in lots of situations than a large hp pool or armor

scabrous.7835:

There are also several tricks that include sheatting weapons. It’s obvious that good players will very often dodge your cnd+steal when they see it coming as an opener. What you can do is start cnd and when you notice them dodge sheath your set

This is a very important tactic if you use ANYTHING that has the dagger in your off hand.
I have my sheath key binded to left alt so i can easily and quickly reach it and cancel my c&d animation before the skill finishes it’s chanel time.
This trick works with all skills that are not insta cast (black powder, larencious strike, headshot, dancing dagger, body shot, cluster bomb, choking gas, pistol whip, just to name a few).

Sarrs.4831:

Make it so that it bounces off the thief if no enemy targets are available to bounce to. In a single target environment, this multiplies its damage by 3. That’s a good start.

And make it give 1 might stack to you if it bounces back to you, if they do this the skill would suddenly become allot more attractive, especially with runes of strenght.

The skill is not that useless now, i use it to break ages or for a cripple if infiltrator’s strike is set to return.
The main issue it has is the slow projectile speed and it often gets obstructed by the smallest bump in the terain

Which trait gives more dps to a longbow if you are solo?
I know spotter is more dps if you at all swap weapons or have another players with you But for solo roaming in wvw and if you camp longbow which trait amounts to more damage overall?

How does one beat thees 2 classes?
I am talking about wvw

I mean engis have ridiculous conditon damage in the aoe form (the worst one possible) that they can just spam at their feet and lots of boons, and lets not forget they are supeer tanky too.
I know you can always outrun them, but what the hell how do you even begin to fight them? Shure you can win every now and then (80% of the time you run for it) but still it is like trying to break a wall with a pice of drift wood.

Same with warriors that use great sword / axe shield and runes of strength.
They are also plenty tanky and can eviscerate for double of what you can backstab.
Also lots of passive healing and lots mobility, so even if things start going your way they can just run circles until they are 100% and get their cooldowns back, then they strike a pose, flex and murder you.

I’v tried d/d d/p and s/p and every set seems to just lack the damage or survivability to finish them before they shove you in to the ground or until you are forced to run.

Before the ferocity nerf i could beat them, but now it’s just a game of how fast can you run away from the immovable object that wants to introduce you to the ground.

It just seems odd not to have one, i mean there are plenty of useless traits that can be replaced with one that gives you say +x% crit chance while wielding a sword or something along those lines.
No one would mind if combined training or combo critical chance where removed for a sword trait, and it would make sense too for it to be in deadly arts or critical strikes.

I thought about a 5/6/3/0/0 d/p build where invigorating precision would act as sustain.
But it looks like it heals for far too little to be of any use, i mean on a backstab it heals for no more than 250 and on the first 3 dagger hits it heals for about 28 per hit.
This is in spvp with 60% critical chance 200% crit damage and 2100 power.

My idea was that this would be a good trait for a point fighter that doesn’t need to constantly go stealth but the heal from this trait to me looks like nowhere near enough to sustain you at all.

So has anyone come up with a build with it or at least theory crafted something because it looks like it has potential, i’m not seeing it.

Before the pach i had 100% crit damage -100% from gear and traits and the 150% that was hidden so that makes 250%.
Now i have 219% so that makes 150% base and 69% from gear and traits..
I used to run a mix of zerker valkyrie and Cavalier gear for a balanced build but now i feel like i have to swap alot of it for more zerker stuff to make up the loss of damage with higher precision.
If i remember the point of this change was to make more build diversity but it backfired at least for most of my builds by making me use more berserker gear to make up for the damage lost.
And wasn’t the change suppose to be 10% critical damage reduction not 30%? this feels like a ridiculous drop in damage.

Is it possible to level up a character while playing structured pvp?
I know i read about the level up scrolls being added to pvp as rewards in a update some time ago, but now i hear they are removed?

After running this build (not 100% exact since i did not want to buy gear so i lack some precision but nothing major) in wvw for a day i have to say it is refreshing as it’s play style differs allot from the general d/d d/p ect. builds that are meta.
But i noticed there are 2 big downsides to it;

You are reliant on using shadow strike to do most of your damage and keep you safe via creating space but you have no extra ini regen, so often you just run out, forced to sit in stealth which, as you said is not very good since you do not achieve much in the sense that you do not regenerate and you stop putting pressure on the other guy (conditions don’t do to much).

The other thing is, and this might change if spend more time with the weapon set, is the vital shot. It is so slow i mean if someone is within ~180 distance of you he can strafe to the side of you and move outside of you’r characters..idk what to call it line of sight (like a frontal cone the; same thing happens with rangers when they use say rapid fire and you move to the side of their character, it stops chaneling), which makes you stop the vital shot.

Another thing about it is it is not a forgiving build; you have no vigor no blinds (sos hardly counts), and no weapon evade skill, so it is not a easy way to play, but this is not a bad thing.
Finally…how do you handle mesmers? I mean i can’t seem to beat a good mesmer and the pu ones are a absolute nightmare with this setup.

Signet of malice is not good at all unless you are not using ricochet with pistols or a short bow and even then it is only good in very zergy encounters where you are not focused and can pew pew from afar (or in pve).

Withdraw is much better for it’s low cooldown (compared to hide in shadows you can use it twice before his would go off cd so you get almost the same healing give or take 1k or so, but it is one of the few heals in game that can’t be interrupted so it is the best of 3 in my opinion). And it removes cripple, chill and immobolise, so if you take it i would suggest swapping roll for initiative for something else (yes you lose the 6 ini but the cooldown is 60 sec, and you could swap it for infiltrator’s signet for the ini regen and the stickiness it provides).

Signet of agility is probably the best signet thieves have, so i would not change it. Not only can you chain 4 dodges (or 5 if you chose to spend 15 points in acrobatics) but if you are running with a partly you can refill the endurance of 4 other people near you and remove 1 condition from them as well as you (you are counted as 1 of the 5 nearby allies when you activate the signet).
You can’t get more utility from a utility than what signet of agility offers.

And for the swiftness, well could use runes of the centaur with withdraw for near perma swiftness or use runes of speed or traveler (warning you are required to sell a kidney to afford them, but honestly wait for the april 15th patch that will change all runes and then look for one that is to do with speed).
Or put 5 points in acrobatics and dodge for swiftness.

Also do yourself a favor and use a shortbow or dagger/x as the other weapon set. Dual pistols are not good at all unless you are in a zerg and have ricochet, which yields the same effect as a shortbow with a sigil of fire which is also a better weapon for general fights.

One last thing you might want to trade some vitality for toughness, also also you don’t really have any way to reliably deal with condition spam (unless you want to blow shadow step and return to clear 3 conditions) so i would suggest a sigil of purity (or better yet generosity [this will cost you your other kidney] but if ether one of thees looks tempting better wait for the april patch that changes allot of stuff and maybe there will be a better option).

I have a similar issue that never happened before yesterday.

The game just freezes at random points and i can’t even pull up the task manager or anything and am forced to restart my laptop.
When the freez happens the game reports no errors or anything, and the freezing happened in dungeons as well as in wvw (i haven’t spend much time afk in towns or in general pve outside of dungeons but i assume it will freez there if i give it enough time).

I haven’t changed any drivers since this started happening so i am clueless as to what’s going on

I noticed that Superior sigil of accuracy doesn’t give the +5% crit chance when i wp to a new zone unless i take off the weapon with the sigil and re-equip it.

My offhand weapon has a superior sigil of force, so i have no idea if it suffers from the same effect.